One of the reasons we are going with publishing companies is mainly because we don't know about the whole process.
Is Pegasus a vanity publisher? Find out if it's a good choice that will help you earn much from your books in this Pegasus Publishing Review.
Today's question has three answers and the third answer is a secret you're going to want to stick around for. Because I'm going to tell you how you can maximize your earnings with Pegasus book publishing.
Now let's get into it. The question that was sent in today was, is Pegasus a vanity publisher? This is a very common question because when you're looking to find the correct publisher for your book.
No Money Coming Back
Whether you're going to do it self publish or go with a traditional publisher or something in between, you want to know whether or not dealing with a professional organization is going to properly handle your book.
Maybe increase the number of sales or impress other people with the publisher that you chose to go with. That is what we're going to get in today with regards to vanity publishing and Pegasus.
But before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Checklist. It will help you get started on your self-publishing journey right away. So, is Pegasus a vanity publisher?
Well, let me get into my story. When I first got started, I just went it myself. I did not try to find somebody who could.
It's not like I had a book that I had already written and then was going to look for somebody to put it out. Rather, I was going the opposite direction which was I wanted to put some of my ideas out into the world.
But I needed to know exactly what was the most strategic way of doing that. It was going to be through self-publishing. Then I got directly into it, with Kindle Publishing.
Check out this related article: Is Self Publishing To Kindle Difficult?
Where I wrote the book a certain number of chapters a day until I had the book produced. Then I was able to put it out there and learn how to do ads. I learn how to do all sorts of marketing around the entire thing to get the sales to go up.
Usually starting with complete failure and then over time learning how to increase the number of sales on my books. So one thing though, along the vanity publishing side of things as I listened to a lot of podcasts, a lot of Youtube videos, and read a lot of books.
One of the things that became clear was that there are companies out there that specifically say, "oh your book is wonderful just send us money".
Then after you send them some money, they say "oh we see the sales are not so good so you need to send us some more money and if you want to upgrade the package for the cover, then we'll need more money".
If you want to upgrade this, at the end of the day they are also taking a very high percentage of royalties from you. So, we continue the game and you're like, "I'm never making my money back, it's only costing me tens of thousands of dollars. I'm never seeing any money at all come back".
It Is Both Yes And No
The worst part was when people say, "this is a scam, I want to get out of it". Then, they found themselves in a position where the rights to the book were actually underneath this vanity publisher. They couldn't even get the rights to their book back without a big legal fight.
They will be paying even more money to get it back so that they could then start to earn money on their books and it was a really negative experience. So I completely feel and understand the pain associated with making the wrong choice when it comes to vanity publishing.
Maybe perhaps with Pegasus which was not one of the companies that were being discussed on the podcast books and Youtube videos that I was watching at the time on this one. So let's get into it. Is Pegasus a vanity publisher?
Well, the answer is yes and no. No in the sense that when you send your manuscript and many of the people who have gone this particular route they have been rejected by Pegasus. It is because of the quality of their book.
So in a sense, they're working as a gatekeeper. The traditional vanity publishers will simply accept any book that comes in and then start charging you. Their entire basis for making money is by upselling you on one after another thing that you can get.
It is with regards to their marketing services or their production services, or editing, or proofreading, or covers, or descriptions, or keywords, or all of the research and all of these sorts of things.
Then they will also take royalties at the end of it. So, you end up with this nasty negative experience. Many of the people who went with Pegasus have not had that in that sense.
But on the yes side, it's not like they are giving you a huge bonus to start doing it. Many people who have gone with them had to pay 300 pounds just to even start the process. Then after they had paid that money, they did help them get a lot of the mistakes made.
Some people complained a little bit about some of the mistakes that were left unfixed with proofreading services and such. But they were able to get the book published out there with the covers and everything looking great.
Check out this related article: What Vanity Publisher Definition?
But then they would get some crazy high percentage of the royalties that would be coming back. I think it was like 50% or something. You can correct me in the comments if that's incorrect.
Everything changes regularly with these companies. But the royalty percentages were pretty high that they would take an addition. So then the question was, would you ever get your money back?
Many readers that I found who had writers that come this way and chosen to go this route, they found that they wanted to pull their book out of this particular company and just do it themselves. Because they made more money going on that particular route.
But people said it was a mixed experience it wasn't just like everybody's saying, "oh this is terrible, a scam or something". But they did say, "We pay all this money upfront and such". And they did not accept every book that was submitted.
A Not So Bad Option
They were doing some checking about what they were accepting. But when they did, you would pay them as opposed to like a traditional publisher paying you, getting paid a bonus to write the book for them. So it would go as opposed to that direction.
You would end up having to pay there. You'd pay for all the marketing services and then at the end, some people felt not so satisfied with regards to the after-experience. When the book was actually out in print.
They were not doing so much promoting and marketing of the book at that point. So, the second answer for today is that the fees are much higher than you would do get if you self-publish yourself.
But our secret answer for the day is telling you how you can make the most money with Pegasus publishing. That is the fact that you will make a lot more money if you do everything yourself.
If you have the money but not the time or the motivation, then Pegasus publishers are a perfect solution for you. Especially when we see that people were not so negative about the overall experience.
It wasn't like some of these scam publishers, where they just keep dinging you for money, and at the end of the day, you're making nothing. They don't even have a clue even on how to do marketing.
Their whole point is making money just by upping it and you are never going to go back to them again. But then they trick, they use that money to fund their marketing to bring more people in, more suckers coming in.
That is not what is happening with Pegasus Publishing. So, this is definitely a good place to start if you simply don't have the time or the motivation to go about doing it. It is better to produce something and maybe for your future books you decide to do it alone.
But just getting that book out there at all can be very motivational. The fact that they do say no to some of the manuscripts that come to them, they're not willing to work with them.
Also Read: Learn what are the Benefits of Self Publishing
That shows also that they are more reliable as opposed to just, "we'll take whatever you want and we'll put any garbage you can create and shove it onto the market" which is not what they are doing.
Conclusion
So, I am not saying anything negative about Pegasus Publishers, I'm just simply saying that you could do better if you do it yourself.
By following the simple steps that I have listed on my free Self-Publishing Checklist.
Is Pegasus a vanity publisher? Is Pegasus publishers Legit? What have you found? Do you have any Pegasus publisher review or Do you have an Pegasus Publishing Complaints
Go ahead and let me know below in the comments, I would really love to hear it.
Maybe you had great experiences with them or maybe you didn't have such great experiences? I respond to all comments that are left below.
I love to hear from you and check out my other self publishing blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.